History of holdups stretches back more than a century

By SCOTT MacLEOD

Wellington's $1 million armoured-car heist was big - but it was only the latest in a string of holdups and bank robberies that has captivated New Zealanders over more than 100 years.

Herald files show that as early as the mid-1800s our frontier nation was plagued by highwaymen, cut-throats and robbers. Many a West Coast goldminer was relieved of his purse by roaming teams of thugs that seemingly struck at random.

One of the worst was the notorious Burgess gang, led by Richard Burgess and Thomas Kelly.

In 1865 they intended to rob a bank in Buller, but it was closed. So they tramped from Hokitika to Picton where, Burgess later said, "the banks were entirely at the mercy of any marauders who liked to enter them."

On the way, they found time to strangle an old miner, then rob, tie up, strangle, stab and shoot a group of four travellers they believed were carrying money.

After robbing the Okarito bank of £2500, three of the gang were hanged for murder.

That was just the start for the West Coast. Between 1906 and 1920, robbers plundered four payrolls heading for mining camps, leaving at least one person dead.

But highwaymen - the forerunners of today's armoured-car robbers - were active for decades longer.

In the 1920s, Wellington was plagued by pistol-toting men who stopped cars by lying on the road.

A Herald story from November 1928 described a similar robbery on Great South Rd, Auckland, as "a sensational hold-up at the point of the revolver and a thrilling effort at pursuit, foiled by the firing of two shots from the revolver, one of which punctured the tyre of the pursuing motorcycle and sidecar."

Dog-eared and fading Herald files from 1943 recount the trial of Leo Edward Morland, aged 42, who pilfered 3650 ounces of gold while working for the Arahura Gold Dredging Company. That amounts to more than $2 million today.

Morland's bosses had no idea the gold was even missing, since he accumulated much of it by scraping gold blocks and plates. He was caught when he emigrated to the United States and tried to smuggle the gold into Canada inside two camphor chests. But, by luck, the story from a US newspaper about the smuggling bid was read by a Greymouth man, who recognised Morland's name and told police.

Morland did three years' hard labour after a trial involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and US Customs agents.

Then there were the two 16-year-old boys who borrowed dad's car one afternoon in 1942, changed the number plates, donned scarves and sunglasses, and held up the Otahuhu Railway Workshops payroll car with a .22 rifle.

The £10,000 stored inside was a huge sum in those days - but the boys were caught and later tried in the Children's Court.

A waterfront payroll holdup in 1956 set a new record for a robbery, when £20,000 was taken.

But the most daring theft reported that year was of £6000 in gems from Costume Jewellery in Queen St, Auckland. Cat-burglars risked death by leaping across an alleyway - between two windows more than 20m high. They lowered their booty to the ground by rope and were believed to have fled overseas.

By the 1960s robbers were raiding betting shops for easier pickings.

Then the focus shifted to armoured cars, with bigger and bigger sums stolen.

In one 1992 robbery, two men took $480,000 of foreign and NZ cash from a security van in Federal St, Auckland. In May 1999, two Hutt Valley brothers took more than $600,000 from two Armourguard security men in Paraparaumu, firing a shotgun as they fled. It was the biggest armoured-car heist in New Zealand history ... until two weeks ago.